JOURNAL 

of 


The  Presbyterian 
Historical  Society 


VOL.  V         SEPTEMBER,  igio 


No.  7 


PHILADELPHIA 
PUBLISHED  BY  THE  SOCIETY  AT  518-52*  WITHERSPOON  BUILDING 

1910 


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The  Presbyterian  Historical  Society* 

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Representing  the  Churches  of  the  Presbyterian  order  in  the  United  States 
of  America : 

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Presbyterian  Church  in  the  U.  S.  Ref.  Presbyterian  Church  of  N.  A.  (Syn.) 

Reformed  Church  in  the  U.  S.  Ref.  Presbyterian  Church  in  N.  A.  (Q.  Syn.) 

Reformed  Church  in  America.  Calvinistic  Methodists  in  U.  S. 

Assoc.  Ref.  Synod  of  the  South. 

«. 
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CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

John  Heman  Converse,  LL.D 301 

The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches.    By  Principal  Robert 

Ellis  Thompson,  S.T.D 311 

Annual  Sermon  Preached  Before  the  Presbyterian  Historical  So- 
ciety on  Sunday,  February  20,  1910,  in  the  Princeton  Pres- 
byterian  Church,   Philadelphia,   by  the   Pastor,    Rev.    H, 

Alford  Boggs 340 

The  Monument  at  Sycamore  Shoals 352 

Chaplain  Samuel  Doak 362 

Editorial 354 

Editorial  Notes 359 

Record  of  New  Publications 362 


THE  PSALM-BOOK  OF  THE  REFORMED  CHURCHES. 

J,     y 

BY   PRINCIPAL   ROBERT    ELLIS    THOMPSON,    S.T.D. 

The  Four  Walls  of  the  City  of  God,  the  old  theologians 
used  to  say,  are  Doctrine,  Discipline,  Government  and  Wor- 
ship. The  last  of  these  we  now  discriminate  into  Prayer 
and  Praise.  But  the  line  of  separation  is  uncertain  even 
now,  and  at  first  its  existence  was  not  recognized,  as  for 
instance  in  the  Book  of  Psalms.  While  the  whole  collection 
is  called  "Praises"  (Tehillim),  yet  at  the  close  of  the  sec- 
ond of  the  five  Books  into  which  it  is  divided,  we  read  "The 
Prayers  of  David,  the  Son  of  Jesse,  are  ended."  And  while 
something  over  a  third  of  the  Psalms  are  songs  of  praise, 
of  which  the  CHI  and  the  CXLV  are  the  types,  the  element 
of  prayer  and  supplication  enters  into  the  rest.  But  in 
Christian  worship  it  is  generally  recognized  that  in  prayer 
the  varied  wants  of  the  congregation — some  general  and  uni- 
versal, others  specific  and  individual — are  laid  before  God 
by  the  spokesmen  of  the  worshipers,  while  the  praises  of  God 
for  his  unchanging  mercies  are  uttered  by  the  whole  people  in 
suitable  forms,  generally  known  and  prepared  beforehand, 
so  that  all  can  unite  in  them. 

The  Book  of  Psalms  is  the  most  wonderful  body  of  praise- 
songs  and  prayer-songs  in  the  world's  literature.  Antiquity 
has  nothing  to  put  beside  it  for  a  minute.  It  is  unique  be- 
cause it  is  a  poetic  record  of  the  unique  history  of  the 
Jewish  people  under  the  leading  of  God.  While  all  ancient 
peoples  set  out  with  a  simple  and  ethical  faith  in  God,  the 
Jews,  although  equally  with  their  neighbors  exposed  to  the 
temptations  which  elsewhere  reduced  that  faith  to  ghost- 
worship  and  mythology,  and  to  a  debased  anthropomorphism 
which  clothed  the  gods  with  all  the  cruelties  and  impurities 
of  their  worshipers,  did,  for  some  reason,  overcome  these 
temptations  on  the  whole.  Mr.  Andrew  Lang,  in  his  valu- 
able work  on  "The  Making  of  Religion"  (1898),  traces  this 
unique   victory   to   the   elevating   influences   of   the   Hebrew 

311 


312      The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches. 

Prophets  upon  their  people.  The  Prophets  themselves  trace 
it  to  the  direct  influence  of  God  on  his  elect  people,  the  send- 
ing of  the  Prophets  being  one  of  his  ways  of  doing  this. 
The  Psalms  are,  in  their  own  way,  the  record  of  this  bat- 
tle and  this  victory.  They  tell  of  conflicts  with  the  forces 
which  made  their  kindred  worshipers  of  brute  and  unholy 
power,  and  with  the  forces  of  despair  and  of  fleshliness,  and  of 
victories  won  through  the  presence  of  a  God  of  help  and  de- 
liverance, who  responds  to  every  cry  of  his  people.  "The 
shout  of  a  King  is  in  them."  Men  speak  in  them  out  of  a 
real  experience  of  God,  which  finds  an  answer  in  the  hearts  of 
all  ages. 

The  Jewish  use  of  the  Psalms  in  worship  seems  to  have 
been  confined  to  the  Temple  services.  They  were  not  even 
included  in  the  Scriptures  read  in  the  Synagogue,  nor  do  we 
hear  of  singing  in  any  form  in  that  service.  Nor  is  it  men- 
tioned in  the  account  of  the  first  Church,  in  the  period  fol- 
lowing Pentecost.  It  is  said,  indeed,  that  they  "did  eat 
their  bread  with  gladness  and  singleness  of  heart,  praising 
God"  (Acts  2:46-47).  But  this  is  a  reference  to  the  Bera- 
choth  ("Blessings"),  which  were  uttered  before  and  after 
meat,  and  to  which  there  are  frequent  references  in  the  Gos- 
pels, including,  I  think,  the  humnesan  ("sang  a  hymn")  of 
Matthew  26  :  30 ;    Mark  14 :  26. 

The  first  mention  of  Christian  song  is  Luke's  statement 
that  Paul  and  Silas  in  the  prison  at  Philippi  "at  midnight 
sang  praises  to  God,  and  the  prisoners  heard  them"  (Acts 
16:25).  But  in  that  apostle's  first  Epistle  to  the  Corin- 
thians (14:26),  to  the  Ephesians  (5:19),  and  to  the  Colos- 
sians  (2:16),  it  appears  that  the  singing  of  God's  praises 
had  enriched  the  worship  of  the  Church  beyond  that  of  the 
Synagogue,  and  that  the  Book  of  Psalms  was  used  in  this 
devotion.  On  the  thorny  question  whether  the  "hymns  and 
spiritual  songs,"  twice  mentioned  along  with  "psalms," 
are  varieties  of  the  psalms,  or  other  than  the  psalms,  I  shall 
not  enter  here.  But,  as  Dr.  Doellinger  well  says,  the  con- 
tents of  the  Book  of  Psalms  fitted  well  to  the  situation  and 
experiences  of  the  Church  of  those  days,  for  it  was  a  time 


The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches.      313 

of  fightings  and  of  fears  for  others  than  the  Apostle ;  and 
the  book  is  a  garland  of  war-songs  for  the  war  in  which 
men  battle,  not  with  flesh  and  blood,  but  with  principalities 
and  powers  and  the  rulers  of  the  darkness  of  this  world, 
and  spiritual  wickedness  in  high  places. 

The  use  of  the  Psalms  led  to  imitations  of  the  Psalms, 
especially  in  that  first  age,  when  Greek  influence  had  not 
imposed  classic  forms  on  Christian  poetry.  A  large  num- 
ber of  Christian  psalms  are  found  in  the  Syriac  collection 
lately  published  by  Prof.  J.  Kendall  Harris,  but  these  are 
probably  of  Gnostic  origin.  Very  different  are  the  three 
notable  psalms  of  the  Orthodox  Church:  (a)  The  Greek 
Phos  hilar  on,  or  song  for  the  lighting  of  the  lamps;  (6) 
The  Gloria  in  Excelsis  Deo,  based  on  the  song  of  the  angels 
at  our  Lord's  Nativity,  and  existing  in  both  Greek  and  Latin; 
and  (c)  The  Te  Deum  Laudamus,  found  only  in  Latin,  and 
probably  composed  in  Africa  before  the  end  of  the  second 
century,  as  Cyprian  certainly  has  it  in  mind  in  one  of  his 
tracts.1  These  probably  are  but  a  handful  out  of  a  great 
body  of  Christian  psalms,  composed  in  the  free  rhythmic 
form  used  in  the  Hebrew  psalter.  They  probably  are  the 
best,  and  were  saved  from  the  general  wreck  of  their  kind 
by  qualities  which  fixed  them  in  the  minds  of  the  Christian 
people. 

With  the  rise  of  Greek  influences  in  the  Church,  Psalmody 
gave  place  to  Hymnody.  in  the  classic  forms  of  verse, 
based  on  vowel  quantities.  This  in  turn,  in  the  Latin 
West,  gave  way  to  verse  based  on  accent  and  rhyme,  which 
we  find  in  the  great  hymns  of  the  Middle  Ages.     But  the 

1  Its  early  date  has  been  obscured  by  some  editor  having  tacked  on 
eight  verses  from  Jerome's  Vulgate,  at  the  end  of  the  original  hymn, 
which  ends  with  ' '  in  glory  everlasting. ' '  All  the  quotations  from  Scrip- 
ture and  allusions  to  it,  in  the  hymn  itself,  are  based  on  the  old  Itala 
version,  made  centuries  before  that  of  Jerome.  I  showed  this  in  an 
article  in  The  Andover  Review  for  July,  1890;  and  since  that  time  an 
Irish  manuscript  has  been  found,  which  contains  the  hymn  without  the 
added  eight  verses.  See  also  The  Sunday-School  Times  for  March  4, 
1899,  where  a  letter  from  the  late  Professor  F.  J.  A.  Hort  is  given 
sustaining  this  view  of  the   Te  Deum. 


314      The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches. 

Book  of  Psalms  retained  a  high  place  in  the  worship  of  the 
Church,  and  holds  it  still  in  the  service-books  of  both  the 
Roman  Catholic  and  the  Greek  Churches.  The  Roman 
Breviary  requires  the  recitation  or  chanting  of  thirty-one 
Psalms  every  week  day,  and  thirty-seven  every  Sunday,  by 
the  clergy  and  monks  of  that  communion.  While  much  might 
be  said  against  the  mechanical  and  monotonous  use  of  the 
Psalms  in  this  way,  and  against  their  being  recited  in  the 
bad  Latin  of  an  inaccurate  version — not  that  of  Jerome's 
Vulgate — we  surely  must  be  glad  that  their  unceasing  wit- 
ness to  man's  immediate  access  to  God  has  been  on  the  lips 
of  the  priesthood  of  this  hierarchic  Church. 

The  first  achievement  of  the  Reformers  in  the  field  of 
worship  was  the  restoration  of  the  language  of  the  people  to 
its  rightful  place  as  the  language  of  worship.  As  at  Pente- 
cost, it  might  now  be  said,  "We  all  do  hear  in  our  own 
tongues"  the  wonderful  works  of  God.  The  Bible  was  given 
to  the  people,  and  they  were  enabled  to  pray  and  praise  as 
a  Christian  congregation,  instead  of  watching  a  clerical 
service  in  Latin.  In  the  reform  of  the  Church's  praise, 
as  in  other  things,  two  ideals  as  to  the  method  of  reforma- 
tion became  manifest.  The  Evangelical  Church,  following 
Luther,  aimed  at  the  retention  of  whatever  in  previous  usage 
was  not  open  to  objection  as  distinctly  unscriptural,  or  as 
interfering  with  the  edification  of  the  people.  On  this  con- 
servative principle  the  Latin  hymns  of  the  Middle  Ages 
were  rendered  into  German,  Scandinavian  and  English  verse, 
and  were  supplemented  by  other  hymns  of  the  same  general 
character  and  form.  Sometimes  these  were  suggested  by  the 
Psalms  or  other  Scriptures,  but  they  rarely  aimed  at  an 
exact  rendering  of  the  inspired  originals.  Thus  of  Luther's 
thirty-six  hymns,  seven  are  free  versions  of  Psalms,  eleven 
are  renderings  of  Latin  hymns,  and  four  are  adaptations  of 
old  German  hymns,  while  only  five  are  original  work.  On 
this  line  the  Lutherans  have  proceeded,  until  it  is  estimated 
that  their  store  of  German  hymnody  contains  forty  thousand 
hymns  of  merit. 

The  Reformed  Church,  on  the  other  hand,  proceeded  upon 


The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches.      315 

the  conviction  that  the  Reformation  was  a  call  from  God  to 
his  people  to  return  to  his  word  as  their  guide  in  worship 
and  doctrine,  in  government  and  discipline.  "To  the  Law 
and  to  the  testimonies!  If  they  speak  not  according  to  this 
word,  there  is  no  light  in  them. ' '  So  they  passed  by  Breviary 
and  Hymnary  to  find  the  substance  of  their  praise  in  the 
Book  of  Psalms.  They  were  fortunate  in  securing  the  serv- 
ices of  the  best  musicians  of  that  day,  and  some  of  the  best 
poets  also. 

Clement  Marot  (1497-1544)  was  the  best  French  poet  of 
his  time,  and  the  first  in  the  series  of  modern  poets  of  his 
country.  In  his  earlier  years  he  was  a  child  of  the  Renais- 
sance merely,  with  a  satiric  attitude  toward  the  abuses  of 
the  Church  of  Rome,  and  a  scorn  of  its  enactments.  In 
1526  he  was  imprisoned  for  eating  flesh  in  Lent,  and  escaped 
only  through  the  friendship  of  Francis  I,  in  whose  court 
he  held  a  position.  In  1532  he  was  prosecuted  before  the 
Parliament  of  Paris  on  the  suspicion  that  he  had  had  a 
share  in  preparing  the  violent  "placards"  against  the  Mass. 
Much  of  his  earlier  poetry  is  far  from  edifying,  but  in  his 
later  years  he  showed  a  more  serious  spirit.  In  1539  he 
published  at  Paris  his  French  version  of  thirty  of  the  Psalms, 
in  various  well-known  meters.  To  render  any  part  of  the 
Scriptures  into  French  was  regarded  as  showing  a  leaning 
toward  Lutheranism.  It  implied  the  right  of  the  people  to 
have  the  Scriptures  in  their  own  tongue;  and  if  the  trans- 
lator began  with  the  Psalms,  who  knew  where  he  would  stop  ? 

Marot  was  not  a  Hebrew  scholar,  but  among  his  friends  was 
Jean  Vatable,  Professor  of  Hebrew  in  the  College  Royale 
of  Paris,  who  did  much  good  work  in  the  correction  of  the 
Latin  version  of  the  Bible  according  to  "the  Hebrew  verity"; 
and  it  is  believed  that  the  poet  was  introduced  by  this  friend 
to  "the  austere  beauty"  of  the  Psalms.  This  made  his  ver- 
sion doubly  objectionable;  and  worse  still  was  its  immediate 
and  general  popularity.  The  king  and  his  courtiers  sang 
Marot 's  Psalms.  The  common  people  sang  them  in  their 
evening  walks  on  the  Pre  aux  Clercs,  and  in  their  homes. 
Jean  Bouchard,  the  Inquisitor  of  Heretical  Pravity,  smelled 


316      The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches. 

heresy  in  anything  that  could  so  quickly  displace  the  ribald 
songs  in  which  Paris  delighted;  and  the  doctors  of  the  Sor- 
bonne  agreed  with  him.  The  King  was  obliged  to  forbid 
Marot  to  proceed  farther  with  his  translation,  and  the  poet 
found  it  convenient  to  leave  his  country.  He  had  met  Calvin 
at  the  court  of  the  Duke  of  Ferrara  in  1536,  and  to  Geneva 
Marot  proceeded,  and  found  a  hearty  welcome.  The  great 
reformer  had  already  published  a  collection  of  metrical 
Psalms  at  Strassburg  in  1538,  with  twelve  Psalms  by  Marot 
and  five  by  himself.  He  now  invited  Marot  to  make  a  com- 
plete version,  and  in  1542  appeared  a  psalter  with  forty- 
eight  psalms  by  Marot,  five  by  Calvin,  and  four  by  other 
translators,  with  music  from  German  sources.  But  the 
climate  of  Geneva  was  morally  too  bracing  for  the  pet  poet 
of  the  French  court.  His  enemies  said  he  was  expelled 
from  the  city  for  grave  moral  offences.  The  records  show 
that  he  merely  was  censured  by  the  Presbytery  for  forming 
one  of  a  card-party.  At  any  rate  he  left  Geneva  for  Turin, 
then  in  the  hands  of  the  French,  and  died  there  in  poverty 
in  1544. 

Calvin  now  devolved  upon  his  eminent  associate  and  suc- 
cessor, Theodore  Beza,  the  duty  of  completing  the  psalm- 
book  of  the  church  of  Geneva.  In  1551  thirty-four  more 
psalm-versions  were  published  by  Beza,  and  in  1562  the  en- 
tire Psalter.  Beza  had  been  a  distinguished  Latin  poet  before 
his  adherence  to  the  Reformation;  and  while  he  lacked  the 
felicity  of  Marot  in  handling  the  French  language  and  its 
rhythms,  he  did  his  work  well.  The  literary  quality  of  this 
old  version  has  been  much  and  unduly  depreciated  by  mod- 
ern critics,  and  especially  by  those  who  are  either  hostile 
or  indifferent  to  the  cause  of  the  Reformation.  Its  authors 
were  not  men  of  genius,  but  they  were  among  the  best  poets 
of  their  age,  and  Marot  the  very  best.  After  long  neglect 
his  poetry  is  coming  to  its  rights,  and  his  superiority  to  the 
stiff  and  artificial  poets  of  the  next  age  is  recognized.  Nor, 
say  the  juster  critics,  was  it  the  least  of  his  merits  that  he 
turned  the  mind  of  the  French  muse  to  the  great  fountain 
of  sublime  inspiration  in  the  psalmists  of  Judaea.     Both  his 


The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches.      317 

versions  and  those  of  Beza  are  somewhat  paraphrastic,  aim- 
ing at  literary  expression  rather  than  at  reproducing  the 
simplicity  of  the  original.  But  the  idea  of  each  psalm  is 
fully  grasped,  and  the  connections  of  the  parts  more  fully 
shown  than  could  be  done  in  a  more  literal  version. 

The  clearest  proof  of  the  merits  of  their  work  is  found 
in  the  extraordinary  hold  it  took  upon  the  mind  of  the 
French  people,  not  only  of  the  Reformed  Church,  but  even 
its  enemies.  It  was  a  bulwark  of  the  Huguenot  cause.  To 
use  the  language  with  which  Father  Faber  looked  back  to 
his  Protestant  Bible,  it  became  one  of  the  strongholds  of 
what  the  Romanists  called  heresy.  It  lived  upon  the  ear 
like  the  sound  of  church  bells  which  the  pervert  hardly 
knew  how  he  could  forego — a  music  never  to  be  forgotten. 
The  memory  of  the  dead  passed  into  it ;  the  potent  traditions 
of  childhood  were  stereotyped  in  its  verses.  The  power  of 
all  the  griefs  and  trials  of  a  man  were  hidden  beneath  its 
words.2  More  than  one  Romanist  version  was  made,  to 
break  its  hold  on  the  public  ear.  but  in  vain.  The  converts 
to  Rome  clung  to  it  in  spite  of  their  confessors.  Mme.  de 
Maintenon,  wife  of  Louis  XIV,  authenticated  her  Huguenot 
descent  and  education  by  her  love  of  psalm-singing,  and  by 
her  reluctance  to  go  to  Mass.  Charlotte-Elizabeth,  the  Ger- 
man wife  of  the  king's  brother,  delighted  a  Protestant  painter 
by  singing  the  Huguenot  psalms  under  the  shade  of  the 
garden  trees  at  Versailles. 

Some  individual  psalms  were  especially  dear  through  their 
associations.  The  LXVIIIth  was  the  Huguenot  battle  hymn 
on  many  a  hard-fought  field.  In  later  days  it  was  the  rally- 
ing song  of  the  Camisards.  The  LXXIXth  was  the  first 
martyr-psalm,  sung  at  the  stake  by  the  fourteen  burnt  at 
Meaux  in  1523,  and  so  loudly  that  the  chanting  of  the  priests 
could  not  drown  their  voices.  Seven  others —  the  IXth,  the 
XVIIIth,  the  XXXIst,  the  List,  the  LXXIXth,  the 
LXXXVIth  and  the  CXIVth— share  with  it  this  sad  but 
glorious  association,  as  being  the  last  words  on  the  lips  of 

2  Preface  to  "The  Life  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,"'  London,  1853. 


318      The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches. 

those  who  perished  at  the  stake  or  on  the  wheel  for  the 
crime  of  rejecting  the  traditions  of  men  and  holding  fast 
to  the  word  of  God.  The  effect  produced  by  the  psalms  of 
the  Huguenot  martyrs,  sung  on  their  way  to  execution,  was 
so  great  that  the  magistrates  of  Paris  ordered  that  their 
tongues  should  be  cut  out  before  they  appeared  in  public. 
Many  a  French  family  still  preserves  as  a  precious  heir- 
loom the  little  psalter  possessed  and  used  by  a  martyr 
ancestor.3  The  Huguenots  sang  the  LXXIIIth  as  they  bore 
Coligny  from  the  disastrous  field  of  Montcontour,  seemingly 
wounded  to  death.  It  was  the  singing  of  the  LXXXVIIIth 
which  recalled  Henry  IV  to  the  faith  of  his  heroic  mother, 
after  his  forced  recantation  at  St.  Bartholomew,  The 
XXVIth  was  sung  by  the  refugees  of  1685,  when  they 
reached  Geneva  and  safety.  With  every  generation  the  book 
grew  fuller  of  the  sacred  associations  of  a  glorious  but  suf- 
fering past  of  the  Church. 

A  large  part  of  the  charm  of  the  French  psalter  was  due 
to  the  Huguenot  musicians,  who  wadded  its  verses  to  in- 
spiring tunes.  These  ranked  among  the  best  tone-masters 
of  their  age,  and  nobly  they  served  the  Reformed  Churches. 
First  among  them' comes  Louis  Bourgeois,  who  had  followed 
Calvin  to  Geneva,  and  was  made  the  Precentor  of  the  cathe- 
dral church  of  St.  Peter,  in  which  the  Reformer  preached. 
Before  1557,  when  he  returned  to  Paris,  he  furnished  eighty- 
eight  of  the  psalms  with  appropriate  tunes.  In  this  he  used 
popular  airs,  fragments  of  earlier  melody,  and  even  Ger- 
man chorales ;  but  he  used  all  these  with  the  skill  of  a  master. 
In  the  editions  of  the  psalter  for  use  in  the  church  only  the 
melody  was  given,  as  Calvin  approved  of  no  harmonization 
of  tunes.  But  Bourgeois  also  published,  for  private  use,  an 
edition  with  the  music  in  four  parts.  The  Council  of 
Geneva  evidently  regarded  his  work  as  public  property  as 
soon  as  it  was  used  in  the  church.  In  1551  he  was  thrown 
into  prison  for  having  altered  some  of  the  tunes  "without 

3  A  psalter,  two  inches  long,  and  containing  their  Confession  of  Faith 
as  well  as  the  psalms,  was  made  for  the  Huguenot  ladies,  who  could 
hide  it  in  their  glove.     Hence  its  name,  gantier-psautier. 


The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches.      319 

leave";  but  Calvin  had  him  out  next  day,  and  the  altera- 
tions were  adopted.  By  some  critics  the  music  of  Bourgeois 
is  ranked  so  high  as  to  place  him  in  this  art  alongside  Calvin 
among  the  theologians.  A  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land has  announced  (and  possibly  published)  a  hymn-book, 
to  which  no  other  music  than  the  eighty-eight  tunes  of  this 
composer  are  admitted.  In  the  new  English  Wesleyan 
Hymn-Book  all  the  psalm-tunes  are  taken  from  the  Huguenot 
Psalter. 

Claude  Goudimel  is  the  second  of  the  Huguenot  composers 
who  exerted  a  great  influence  on  psalmody.  A  native  of 
France,  he  proceeded  early  to  Rome,  became  a  singer  in 
the  Pope's  chapel,  and  opened  a  school  for  music,  in  which 
the  great  Palestrina  was  trained.  Returning  to  France, 
he  became  a  Protestant  about  1560,  and  in  1564  published 
an  edition  of  the  psalter  of  Marot  and  Beza,  in  which  the 
airs  of  Bourgeois  are  given  with  emendations,  and  the  music 
is  harmonized  in  four  parts.  This,  like  the  similar  work  of 
Bourgeois,  was  not  meant  for  use  in  churches,  but  it  was 
very  important  in  its  way.  The  French  psalter  wTas  not 
merely  a  church-book,  and  the  Protestants  did  not  confine 
their  psalm-singing  to  their  public  worship.  It  was  their 
book  of  home  and  social  praise,  and  the  harmonized  settings 
filled  a  great  need.  Goudimel's  work  differs  in  character 
from  that  of  Bourgeois  in  greater  floridity,  but  it  also  is 
the  work  of  a  master.  Goudimel  was  one  of  the  victims  of 
St.  Bartholomew. 

But  it  was  to  Claude  Le  Jeune  that  the  Huguenot  psalter 
owed  its  final  musical  form.  He  began  with  ten  psalms, 
with  the  music  harmonized,  in  1564;  but  his  complete  work 
did  not  appear  until  1601,  after  his  death.  The  beauty  of 
its  execution  at  once  gave  it  suffrages  of  the  Reformed 
Churches  outside  of  Switzerland,  where  Bourgeois  held  the 
field.  Later  critics  recognize  in  Le  Jeune  a  great  master  of 
harmony,  and  a  finer  musician  than  Goudimel.  His  treat- 
ment of  the  melodies  of  the  psalter  is  not  revolutionary. 
He  builds  upon  the  work  of  Bourgeois,  but  he  brings  his 
peculiar  gifts  to  bear  in  adapting  his  work  to  the  popular 


320      The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches. 

taste.  It  was  his  music  which  made  its  way  into  Germany 
and  other  countries,  despite  local  traditions,  and  gave  the 
Reformed  Psalter  a  common  character  throughout  Europe. 
It  is  said  to  have  gone  through  more  editions  than  any  other 
musical  wrork  ever  printed. 

The  work  of  the  Huguenot  musicians  was  of  a  higher  order 
than  wras  that  of  the  Huguenot  psalmists,  and  gave  to  that 
psalter  its  commanding  place  as  the  type  and  norm  of  the 
praise  of  the  Reformed  Churches.  Their  "grave,  solemn 
measures  and  their  strong  sustained  harmonies"  caught  the 
ear  and  won  the  hearts  of  Europe,  even  Roman  Catholics 
and  Lutherans  confessing  the  charm  they  exercised.  In 
1573  Ambrosius  Lobwasser,  of  Koenigsberg,  rendered  the 
French  psalter  into  German  verse,  for  the  sake  of  introduc- 
ing the  French  music  to  Germans.  In  1637  the  eminent  poet 
Martin  Opitz,  and  in  1713  the  pious  hymn-writer  Ernest 
Lange,  translated  the  Book  of  Psalms  into  German  of  the 
French  meters,  that  they  might  be  sung  to  that  music.  All 
three  were  Lutherans,  and  were  censured  by  zealots  of  their 
own  Church  for  this  approximation  to  the  Reformed.  The 
version  of  Lobwasser,  a  translation  of  a  translation,  was 
adopted  by  the  Reformed  Churches  of  Germany,  and  wTas 
published  in  editions  past  enumeration,  until  it  wras  super- 
seded by  that  of  Matthias  Jorissen  in  1798. 

What  was  thus  done  in  Germany,  was  t}rpical  of  the  ac- 
ceptance of  the  Huguenot  example  throughout  Europe.  The 
Psalm-books  of  the  Reformed  Churches  of  Italy,  Spain,  Hol- 
land, Bohemia,  Poland  and  the  Romanisch-speaking  Grisons 
in  Switzerland  were  prepared  on  the  French  scheme  of 
meters,  and  with  the  musical  setting  furnished  by  the 
Huguenot  musicians.  From  Locarno  to  Edinburgh,  and 
from  Rochelle  to  Warsaw,  throughout  the  great  sisterhood 
of  the  Reformed  Churches,  on  the  firing  line  of  the  battle 
for  Protestantism,  the  Christian  people  sang  David's  Psalms 
to  the  French  tunes. 

But  every  living  language  changes  from  age  to  age,  and 
by  the  second  half  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  vocabu- 
lary and  phrasing  of  the  psalms  of  Marot  and  Beza  had  be- 


The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches.      321 

come  to  some  extent  antiquated.  For  the  psalm-book  was 
not,  like  our  English  Bible,  the  common  possession  of  a  whole 
people.  It  was  the  book  of  a  minority — an  heroic  and  intel- 
ligent minority,  but  still  a  minority — and  therefore  unable 
to  fix  the  forms  of  speech  for  a  whole  country.  Valentine 
Conrart,  who  undertook  its  revision,  was  a  very  notable 
French  scholar.  It  was  at  his  house  that  those  meetings  of 
men  of  letters  were  held,  which,  under  the  patronage  of 
Richelieu,  grew  into  the  French  Academy;  and  he  was  its 
first  Perpetual  Secretary.  One  Sunday  he  was  too  unwell 
to  attend  the  church  at  Charenton  outside  Paris,  where  the 
Reformed  worship  was  tolerated.  He  kept  his  room,  read 
his  Bible  and  sang  the  psalms  of  Marot  and  Beza.  Some  of 
his  scholarly  friends  dropped  in  on  him  while  he  was  thus 
employed,  and  found  the  vocabulary  and  phrasing  of  the 
old  French  psalms  very  laughable.  As  he  had  a  French- 
man 's  keen  sense  of  ridicule,  he  was  moved  to  attempt  some- 
thing more  accordant  with  the  usage  of  his  own  time.  His 
modernization  of  the  old  psalms,  finished  by  his  friend  La 
Bastide  after  his  death,  was  published  in  1679.  It  retained 
carefully  the  meters  of  the  early  text,  so  as  to  maintain  their 
adaptation  to  the  old  music ;  but  the  alterations  in  many 
cases  were  made  with  very  slight  regard  to  the  sense  of  the 
original.  This  led  to  a  farther  revision  by  the  pastors  of 
the  church  of  Geneva,  in  1695,  which  became  the  standard 
psalm-book  of  the  French-speaking  Protestants,  although 
some  of  the  churches  went  on  using  the  unrevised  text  until 
far  into  the  eighteenth  century,  and  a  few  used  a  revision 
of  Conrart  and  La  Bastide  made  by  Pastor  Beausobre,  of 
Berlin. 

In  the  nineteenth  century,  largely  through  German,  Eng- 
lish and  Moravian  influences,  Psalmody  gave  way  to  Hymn- 
ody  in  the  French  churches;  and  the  hymns  of  Pictet, 
Cesar  Malan,  Alexander  Vinet,  Theodore  Monod  and  Eugene 
Bersier  are  among  the  best.  In  1881  the  General  Synod  of 
the  Reformed  Church  of  France  appointed  a  Commission  on 
Sacred  Song,  and  in  1893  the  result  of  its  labors — a  collec- 
tion  of   Psalms   and   Hymns    (Psaumes   et   C antiques) — was 


322      The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches. 

adopted.  In  this  book  there  is  a  partial  return  to  the  early 
Psalter  of  the  Reformation.  Fifty-two  of  its  Psalms,  in  a 
revised  form,  are  prefixed,  with  the  old  music ;  and  fifteen 
of  the  two  hundred  and  forty-seven  Hymns  are  set  to  the 
music  of  the  Psalter. 

The  story  of  the  Huguenot  Psalter  has  an  especial  interest 
for  us  through  its  influence  on  the  early  psalm-books  of  Eng- 
land and  Scotland.  At  one  time  it  seemed  probable  that 
both  countries  would  become  Lutheran,  and  adapt  Hymnody 
rather  than  Psalmody  in  their  worship.  The  first  books  of 
sacred  song — the  "Ghostly  Psalms  and  Spiritual  Songs"  of 
Miles  Coverdale,  and  the  "Good  and  Godly  Ballads"  of  the 
Wederburns  of  Dundee — are  Lutheran  in  character.  It  was 
due  to  Wishart  and  Knox  in  Scotland,  and  to  Ridley  and 
Cranmer  in  England  that  both  countries  became  Reformed 
about  the  time  of  Luther's  death,  and  therefore  were  psalm- 
singing  communities.  And  the  leaders  of  the  reformatory 
movement  in  both  were  driven  to  Geneva  seven  years  after 
that  change  by  persecution  at  home,  and  there  learned  the 
new  music  of  the  Reformation. 

The  beginnings  of  a  popular  English  psalm-book  were 
made  as  early  as  the  reign  of  Edward  VI,  by  Thomas  Stern- 
hold,  Groom  of  the  Robes  to  that  king  and  to  his  father.  He 
tried  to  displace  the  obscene  songs  of  the  courtiers  by  ren- 
dering the  psalms  into  popular  verse,  in  the  meter  of  such 
ballads  as  Chevy  Chase,  now  called  Common  Meter.  At 
times  he  rises  into  poetry,  as  in  two  stanzas  of  the  XVIIIth 
psalm : 

The  Lord  descended  from  above, 

and  bowed  the  heauens  hye: 
And  vnderneath  his  foote  he  cast 

the  darknes  of  the  skye. 
On  Cherubs  and  on  Cherubins 

ful  royally  he  rode: 
And  on  the  wings  of  al  the  windes, 

came  flying  al  abroad. 

But  his  forty  renderings  are  mostly  homely,  and  lacking 
in  the  dignity  of  the  Psalms.     His  chief  associate  was  John 


The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches.      323 

Hopkins,  whom  Antony  Wood  classes  as  the  worst  (infimus) 
English  poet  of  his  day.  Metrically  his  sixty  psalms  differ 
from  Sternhold's  in  having  four  rhymes  to  a  stanza  instead 
of  two.  His  versions  appeared  mostly  in  the  reign  of  Queen 
Elizabeth.  1551-1562.  From  these  two  writers  the  English 
psalm-book  has  been  popularly  called  "Sternhold  and  Hop- 
kins." 

There  were  still  fifty  psalms  to  render,  and  half  of  these 
were  Englished  in  meter,  in  1562,  by  Thomas  Norton,  the 
first  translator  of  Calvin's  "Institutes."  He  also  clung  to 
Common  Meter,  giving  this  version  a  metrical  monotony 
without  a  parallel.  The  rest  were  rendered  by  William  \Vhit- 
tingham,  John  Pullain,  Robert  Wisdom,  and  the  Scotch- 
men John  Kethe  and  John  Craig.  All  of  these  were  among 
the  refugees  at  Geneva ;  and  Whittingham  was  the  pastor 
of  the  church  of  the  exiles  in  that  city,  and  had  much  to 
do  with  the  preparation  and  publication  of  the  Genevan 
Bible,  the  first  satisfactory  English  rendering.  Both  in  their 
versions  of  the  remaining  psalms,  and  in  alternate  versions 
of  psalms  already  translated,  they  show  the  influence  of 
the  meters  and  music  of  the  French  Psalter.  They 
break  very  happily  the  Common  Meter  monotony  of 
Sternhold,  Hopkins  and  Norton,  with  lively  and  vigorous 
renderings,  all  of  which  found  welcome  in  the  Scottish  psalm- 
book. 

In  Scotland  the  General  Assembly  of  1561  ordered  the 
completion  of  the  psalm-book  published  at  Geneva  by  the 
exiles  in  1558.  The  compilers  of  this  Scottish  psalm-book 
(Edinburgh:  1564)  cut  down  Sternhold  and  Hopkins  each 
to  thirty-seven  versions,  and  Norton  to  eight,  with  two  by 
Marckant,  also  of  the  Sternhold  school.  For  these  they  sub- 
stituted versions  by  exiles  of  Geneva — sixteen  by  \Yhitting- 
ham,  two  by  John  Pullain,  twenty-five  by  Kethe,  fifteen  by 
Craig,  and  six  by  Robert  Pont,  another  Scotchman.  This 
gave  eighty-seven  psalms  composed  mostly  in  the  meters  of 
the  French  psalter,  and  adapted  to  its  music.  Of  the  one 
hundred  and  eighteen  tunes  given,  eighty-three  are  French 
or  Genevan.     Thus  the  psalm-book  of  the  Kirk  was  in  line 


324      The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches. 

with  that  of  the  Reformed  Churches  generally,  and  escaped 
that  monotony  which  made  the  psalm-singing  a  by-word  in 
England.  As  a  consequence  it  took  hold  of  the  Scottish 
people  much  as  the  French  Psalter  had  on  the  people  of 
France. 

They  sang  the  psalms  in  unison,  the  Tenor,  not  the  Soprano, 
taking  the  Melody,  and  the  Basses  holding  their  breath  at 
the  high  notes,  or  coming  in  an  octave  lower.  It  is  said  by 
Dr.  William  H.  Stone  (in  Grove's  "Dictionary  of  Music  and 
Musicians")  that  this  sort  of  singing  in  unison  is  still  to 
be  heard  in  England  "in  a  few  village  churches,  and  in 
many  Scotch  kirks." 

The  psaim-singing  of  that  day  was  different  in  other  re- 
spects from  what  became  usual  in  later  times.  It  was  not 
the  singing  of  a  few  verses  interspersed  with  other  parts 
of  the  worship.  The  people  gathered  into  the  parish 
churches  an  hour  or  more  before  the  minister  made  his  ap- 
pearance in  the  pulpit,  and  spent  the  time  in  listening  to 
the  Scriptures  and  in  singing  psalms  under  the  direction  of 
the  precentor,  who  was  generally  the  schoolmaster  of  the 
parish.  They  thus  acquired  a  strength  of  voice  and  length 
of  wind,  which  had  no  equal  even  in  their  desecndants  of  a 
later  time,  as  we  may  see  from  one  of  Dean  Ramsay's  de- 
lightful Scotch  stories.  He  says  that  a  parish  minister  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  after  the  preliminary  exercises  of 
worship,  discovered  that  he  had  left  his  sermon  in  his  study. 
He  leaned  over  the  pulpit  board  and  told  the  precentor  to 
give  out  the  CXIXth  Psalm,  and  sing  until  he  got  back 
from  the  manse,  which  was  close  by  the  church.  "When  he 
reached  his  study  he  thought  he  might  as  well  have  "a  draw 
of  the  pipe,"  as  the  Psalm  was  a  long  one.  But  tobacco 
makes  its  devotees  oblivious  of  the  lapse  of  time,  and  before 
he  was  done  the  "betherill"  rushed  in,  crying:  "Come  awa, 
minister ;  come  awa !  They  hae  wrastled  on  to  the  ninety- 
second  verse,  an'  they're  cheep,  cheepin'  like  birds."  That 
Psalm  would  have  been  but  a  mouthful  to  the  Scotchman  of 
the  seventeenth  century. 

A  knowledge  of  music  was  general  at  that  time  in  Scot- 


The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches.      325 

land,  as  it  came  down  by  popular  tradition  from  an  earlier 
day,  and  was  cherished  in  the  parish  schools.  No  one  could 
obtain  an  appointment  as  schoolmaster  unless  he  could  in- 
struct the  children  in  Psalmody,  as  well  as  in  other  elements 
of  a  sound  education.  As  the  Scottish  delegates  to  the  West- 
minster Assembly  told  the  English  members,  everybody  in 
Scotland  could  read  for  himself,  which  was  far  from  being 
true  of  the  common  people  of  England.  And  with  this  was 
associated  an  extraordinary  intensity  of  spiritual  devotion, 
not,  of  course,  in  the  whole  body  of  the  people,  but  in  a 
much  larger  proportion  of  them  than  Scotland  ever  knew 
before  or  after.  Welsh,  Bruce,  Rutherford,  the  Guthries, 
Livingston,  Frazer  of  Brea  were  the  mountain-peaks,  which 
rose  above  the  general  high  level,  and  made  possible  such 
an  army  as  twice  marched  into  England  in  defense  of 
the  National  Covenant — an  army  in  which  plunder  and  out- 
rage, blasphemy  and  indecency  were  unknown,  and  in  which 
the  rough  songs  of  the  camp  were  replaced  by  the  sounds  of 
Psalm-singing  from  almost  every  tent,  ere  they  settled  into 
quiet  for  the  night.  The  Scottish  Psalter  was  one  of  main- 
stays of  that  national  gravity  and  sobriety,  into  which  the 
nation  had  been  lifted  out  of  the  recklessness  and  lawless- 
ness of  its  earlier  time. 

Here  also  individual  psalms  grew  dearer  through  their 
associations.  James  Melville  tells  us  that  the  XLIVth  and 
the  LXXIXth  were  sung  in  that  dreadful  year  of  the  Mas- 
sacre of  St.  Bartholomew,  when  Knox  was  taken  away  from 
the  head  of  his  nation.  But  they  sang  the  LXXVIth  when 
they  got  news  of  the  defeat  and  wreck  of  the  Armada.  The 
CXXIVth  came  to  be  called  "Durie's  Psalm,"  because  the 
people  of  Edinburgh  sang  it  when  they  met  their  banished 
pastor  at  the  Nether-Bow  in  1582,  and  escorted  him  back 
to  his  home  with  bare  heads  and  loud  singing.  The  saintly 
John  Welsh,  Knox's  son-in-law,  sang  the  Xlth,  on  his  way 
to  the  unjust  tribunal  at  Linlithgow;  and  on  his  banish- 
ment in  1606  to  France,  sang  the  XXIIId  on  the  shore 
at  Leith,  as  a  parting  song  of  courage  and  comfort.  The 
List   became  the   chosen   psalm   for   Fast-Days;    the    CHId 


326      The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches. 

and  the  CXVIth  for  Communions;  and  the  XCth  for 
Burials. 

But  the  old  version  of  the  sixteenth  century  was  not  con- 
structed to  last  forever.  Its  faults  grew  more  glaring  with 
the  lapse  of  time,  with  the  change  of  modes  of  speech,  and 
especially  with  the  growing  distaste  for  its  colloquialisms. 
When  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  was  reached, 
there  had  already  been  several  other  versions  proposed  for 
use,  or  actually  in  use.  The  Pilgrim  Fathers  sang  that  of 
the  Brownist  leader,  Henry  Ainsworth,  published  with  music 
in  1612.  The  Puritans  of  Massachusetts  used  the  Bay  State 
Psalm-Book,  first  published  in  1640,  and  probably  the  most 
clumsy  version  that  ever  came  into  church  use.  The  first 
Stuart  king  of  England,  who  thought  equally  well  of  him- 
self as  a  statesman  and  as  a  poet,  had  his  name  affixed  to 
"The  Psalms  of  King  David,  Translated  by  King  James" 
(1631)  ;  but  the  critics  said  that  it  was  mostly  the  work  of 
Sir  William  Alexander,  Earl  of  Stirling.  King  Charles  I 
tried  to  force  it  upon  the  Scotch,  and  forbade  the  printing 
or  importation  of  any  other  Psalms.  David  Calderwood 
gave  expression  to  the  general  opposition  to  this  loose  and 
highly  artificial  version  in  his  "Reasons  against  the  Recep- 
tion of  King  James's  Metaphrase  of  the  Psalms"  (1635), 
which  compelled  its  real  author  to  revise  it,  and  in  great 
measure  to  rewrite  it,  for  a  second  edition  (London:  1636). 
It  was  bound  up  with  The  Scottish  Service-Book  of  1637, 
popularly  called  "Laud's  Liturgy,"  and  shared  in  the  utter 
overthrow  of  that  insolent  performance. 

Besides  these,  editions  of  much  merit  had  been  published 
by  Sir  Philip  Sidney  and  his  sister  (1587),  George  Wither 
(1632),  George  Sandys  (1637),  Francis  Rous  (1641)  and 
Rev.  William  Barton  (1644).  The  last  two  excited  most  at- 
tention; and  when  it  was  agreed  that  a  new  Psalm-Book 
should  be  part  of  that  scheme  of  religious  uniformity  for 
the  three  Kingdoms,  which  was  contemplated  by  the  Solemn 
League  and  Covenant  of  1643,  there  was  something  of  a 
struggle  between  the  friends  of  the  two  versions.  The  House 
of  Lords   favored   Mr.   Barton's  version   and  the   House  of 


The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches.      327 

Commons  that  by  Francis  Rous.4  The  Westminster  Assembly 
sided  with  the  Commons,  made  a  revision  of  Rous's  version, 
and  in  1646  had  it  printed  and  sent  it  down  to  the  Scottish 
General  Assembly. 

The  Assembly  of  1647  was  not  so  much  in  love  with  uni- 
formity as  to  adopt  it  as  it  stood.  It  was  much  inferior  in 
its  musical  possibilities  to  the  Psalm-Book  of  1564,  as  it  rep- 
resented the  metrical  monotony  of  the  English  Psalm-Book 
of  Sternhold  and  Hopkins.  Almost  all  the  Psalms  were 
versified  in  Common  Meter;  and  while  a  few  were  in  Long 
and  Short  Meter,  hardly  any  showed  the  lively  and  vigorous 
construction  peculiar  to  the  Genevan  and  the  Scotch  psalters, 
and  thus  were  adapted  to  the  music  of  Bourgeois,  Goudimel 
and  Le  Jeune. 

The  Assembly  divided  this  "Paraphrase  of  the  Psalms," 
as  they  called  it,  among  a  committee  of  revision,  each  of  five 
members  to  revise  thirty  psalms,  and  to  "set  down  his  own 
essay  for  correcting  thereof."  It  directed  them  to  make  use 
of  the  versions  by  Sir  Robert  Muir,  of  Rowallan,  and  by 
Master  Zachary  Boyd  of  the  University  of  Glasgow.  The 
former  is  still  imprinted;  the  latter  went  through  three 
editions  in  1646-1648.  This  Assembly  of  1647  also  recom- 
mended that  "Master  Zachary  Boyd  be  at  the  pains  to  trans- 
late  the   other   Scriptural   Songs   in   meter,   and   report  his 

4  Francis  Kous  is  a  more  notable  figure  than  is  generally  supposed. 
His  prose  writings  give  him  a  place  among  the  notable  mystics  of  the 
Puritan  period,  and  were  republished  on  the  continent  in  a  Latin  ver- 
sion (Interiora  Eegni  Dei,  Amsterdam,  1665)  and  commended  by  Pierre 
Poiret,  the  authority  on  mystical  literature.  He  was  one  of  the  lay 
members  of  the  Westminster  Assembly.  He  sat  in  almost  every  Parlia- 
ment from  1625  until  1656,  and  in  Cromwell's  House  of  Lords  in  1657. 
He  also  was  a  member  of  the  Protector's  Privy  Council,  and  had  a 
great  admiration  for  him,  as  the  new  Joshua,  who  was  to  purge  the 
land  of  its  idolatrous  tribes,  and  lead  the  godly  into  triumphant  and 
quiet  possesssion.  He  was  made  Provost  of  Eton  College  in  1643,  and 
Anthony  Wood  says  he  "was  usually  styled  by  the  loyal  party  'the  old 
illiterate  Jew  of  Eton.'  "  Illiterate  he  certainly  was  not,  as  is  evident 
from  his  "Mella  Patrum"  (1650).  His  memory  was  revived  a  decade 
ago,  when  a  high  windstorm  blew  down  a  number  of  the  old  oaks  he 
had  planted  on  the  grounds  of  Eton. 


328      The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches. 

travails  to  the  Commission  of  Assembly,"  that  these  might 
be  sent  to  the  Presbyteries. 

The  Assembly  of  1648  sent  down  to  the  Presbyteries 
"Rouse  Paraphraise  of  the  Psalms,  with  the  corrections  given 
in  by  the  Persons  appointed  by  the  last  Assembly,"  and  ap- 
pointed a  committee  to  revise  "the  labors  of  Master  Zachary 
Boyd  upon  the  other  Scripturall  songs,"  and  report  to  the 
next  Assembly.  The  new  Psalm-Book  was  approved  finally 
by  the  Commission  of  Assembly  on  November  23,  1649,  and 
by  the  Committee  of  Estates  on  January  8,  1650,  and  went 
into  use  on  May  1,  1650.  Its  revision  had  been  so  thorough 
as  to  make  it  entirely  improper  to  call  it  "Rous's  Version." 
Much  of  it  was  a  cento  from  various  versions,  notably  the 
XXIIId  Psalm,  the  most  felicitous  in  the  book.  In  one  re- 
spect it  was  a  distinct  retrogression  from  the  Psalm-Book 
of  1564.  Much  more  than  two  thirds  of  the  Psalms  are  ren- 
dered in  Common  Meter,  instead  of  the  variety  of  meters  and 
consequent  adaptation  to  the  Genevan  music,  which  had  dis- 
tinguished the  Scottish  from  the  English  psalm-book.  To 
obviate  this  somewhat,  a  number  of  the  old  versions  were 
retained  as  alternates,  and  these  have  been  most  pouplar 
with  the  people  who  have  used  the  book.  Such  were  the 
massive  Cth  by  William  Kethe,  the  tender,  pleading  Clld 
by  John  Craig,  the  impressive  CXLVth  and  the  spirited 
CXLVIIIth,  both  by  John  Pullain.  But  in  spite  of  this,  the 
psalm-book  of  1650  suffers  from  the  metrical  monotony, 
which  the  editors  of  that  of  1564  had  tried  to  avoid,  and  in 
so  far  it  was  a  departure  from  the  psalmody  of  the  Reforma- 
tion. 

As  to  the  labors  of  Master  Zachary  Boyd  on  the  other 
Scriptural  Songs,  we  hear  no  more  of  them  in  the  Assembly, 
although  we  know  that  he  did  not  intermit  his  labors.  This 
silence  may  have  been  due  to  the  outbreak  of  the  unhappy 
quarrel  between  the  Engagers  and  the  Protesters  in  1649, 
which  absorbed  the  attention  of  the  Church  to  the  exclusion 
of  almost  everything  else.  After  1649  no  Assembly  met  for 
forty-one  years.  Partly  also  it  may  have  been  due  to  the 
unsatisfactory  character  of  Master  Zachary 's  work.     He  had 


The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches.      329 

more  zeal  and  fluency  than  poetic  power  or  taste.  He  might 
be  said  to  have  been  the  forerunner  of  the  Realistic  school 
of  poetry.  In  his  paraphrase  of  the  Book  of  Jonah,  he  makes 
the  prophet  say,  on  arriving  in  the  whale's  belly: 

What   house   is   this,   where 's   neither   fire   nor    candle, 
Where  I  do  no  thing  but  guts  of  fishes  handle?  .  .  . 
Among  such  grease  as  would  a  thousand  smother. 

Dying  childless  in  1653,  he  left  all  his  property  to  the 
University  of  Glasgow,  with  the  condition  attached  that  it 
should  publish  his  poetical  works.  It  also  has  been  said 
that  the  University  complied  with  the  terms  of  the  will  by 
printing  a  single  copy,  which  they  kept  under  lock  and  key. 
But  this  is  ^incorrect,  as  it  did  not  print  any  of  his  works, 
but  kept  his  manuscripts  locked  up. 

It  is  fitting  here  to  observe  that  the  Assemblies  of  1647  and 
1648  did  not  depart  from  the  Reformed  tradition  in  de- 
siring to  add  other  scriptural  songs  to  the  Book  of  Psalms. 
John  Calvin,  in  the  little  Strassburg  psalter  of  1638,  included 
versions  of  the  Song  of  Simeon  and  of  the  Commandments, 
by  himself.  The  first  Genevan  psalter  (1542)  retains  these, 
and  adds  metrical  versions  of  the  Lord's  Prayer  and  of  the 
Creed  by  Clement  Marot.  In  the  complete  psalter  (1562) 
are  given  Marot 's  version  of  the  Commandments,  the  Song 
of  Simeon,  the  Ave,  the  Lord's  Prayer,  the  Creed,  and 
Graces  before  and  after  Meat,  all  by  Marot.  The  English 
Psalter,  called  after  Sternhold  and  Hopkins  (1560),  include 
Robert  Wisdome's  version  of  Luther's  "Erhalt  uns,  Herr, 
bci  deinem  Wort"  ("Preserve  us.  Lord,  by  thy  dear 
Word")  ;  a  version  of  the  "Gib  Fried  zu  unser  Zeit,  0 
Herr"  ("Give  peace  in  these  our  days,  0  Lord")  ;  of  Wolf- 
gang Klopfel,  by  E.  G.  (possibly  Abp.  Edmund  Grindal)  ; 
a  version  of  the  Athanasian  Creed  by  Thomas  Norton;  a 
version  of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  somewhat  after  Luther,  prob- 
ably by  Bp.  Richard  Cox;  and  "The  Humble  Suit  of  a 
Sinner"  by  John  Marckant.  The  Scottish  psalter  of  1564 
contains  nothing  but  the  Psalms;  but  that  of  1575  has  five 
other  songs;    that  of  1595  has  ten;    and  that  of  1634  has 


330      The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches. 

fourteen.  In  this  last  were  added  doxologies  or  "conclu- 
sions," in  the  meter  of  each  psalm.  To  this  innovation  ob- 
jection was  made  by  some  west-country  ministers  in  such 
terms  as  brought  down  upon  them  the  censure  of  the  Gen- 
eral Assembly  as  favorers  of  Brownism.  For  this  reason 
Robert  Baillie  watched  the  representatives  of  the  Brownist 
or  Independent  party  in  the  Westminster  Assembly,  and 
records  that  they  sang  the  doxology  along  with  the  rest  of 
the  members. 

The  purpose  expressed  in  the  designation  of  Zachary 
Boyd  to  furnish  metrical  versions  of  other  scriptural  songs, 
was  not  carried  out  until  1781,  when  the  "Paraphrases" 
were  added  to  the  psalm-book  of  the  Church  of  Scotland, 
after  a  series  of  efforts  at  collection  and  revision,  which 
extended  over  forty  years.  Some  of  these  are  adaptations 
of  English  hymns  based  on  passages  of  the  Bible;  others 
are  original  work  of  Scottish  authors,  those  of  Michael 
Bruce  being  the  best.  It  is  said  that  Robert  Burns  assisted 
in  the  final  revision,  but  the  tradition  is  doubtful.  It  is 
certain  that  it  was  the  work  of  the  dominant  party  of 
Moderates,  with  whom  Burns  sympathized;  and  because  it 
was  in  the  tone  and  spirit  of  that  party,  it  was  unacceptable 
to  many  of  the  rising  Evangelical  party. 

The  Psalter  of  1650,  whatever  its  defects,  won  its  way 
into  the  affections  of  the  people  of  Scotland,  as  completely 
as  did  the  Huguenot  Psalter  into  those  of  the  French  Protes- 
tants. It  began  to  gather  its  wealth  of  associations  in  the 
forty  years  which  followed  its  publication,  and  which  em- 
brace the  "killing  time"  of  Scottish  Church  history.  The 
restoration  of  diocesan  episcopacy  did  not  prevent  its  gen- 
eral use,  for  the  Stuart  kings  took  warning  by  the  uprising 
of  1637  against  Laud's  Liturgy,  and  did  not  meddle  with 
the  worship  of  the  Kirk.  So  it  remained  the  psalm-book  of 
all  Scotland  until  the  secession  of  the  Episcopalian  party 
after  the  Revolution. 

Its  verses  were  the  relief  of  many  a  weary  hour  to  the 
prisoners  in  the  Bass  or  in  Dunotter  Castle,  as  they  pleaded 
with  God  in  its  words  for  his  speedy  help  to  Zion,  and  for 


The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches.      331 

patience  to  endure  until  his  day  came.  It  was  sung  by  the 
martyrs  of  the  Covenant  as  they  mounted  the  ladder  in  the 
Grassmarket  to  seal  their  testimony  with  their  lives.  Alex- 
ander Hume,  of  Hume,  thus  sang  the  XVIIth;  Andrew 
Sword  and  John  Clyde  the  XXXIVth;  Hugh  McKail  the 
XXXIst;  Marion  Harvey  and  Isobel  Allison  the  XXIId; 
James  Renwick  the  CHId;  Donald  Cargill  the  CXVIIIth. 
Margaret  Wilson  and  Mary  Lacklan,  tied  to  stakes  on  the 
seashore  at  Wigton,  sang  the  XXVth  as  the  waters  of  the 
Solway  rushed  upon  them  to  their  death.  Daniel  McMichael 
sang  the  XLIId  at  the  Entrekin,  while  he  faced  the  muskets 
of  the  troopers,  who  shot  him  down  with  the  sacred  words 
on  his  lips.  The  outworn  and  hungry  company  at  Rullion 
Green,  surrounded  by  Dalzell's  desperadoes,  lifted  up  their 
voices  in  the  LXXIVth: 

O   God  why  hast  Thou  cast  us  off? 
Is  it  forever  more? 

Peden,  flying  from  one  hiding  place  to  another,  found  com- 
fort in  the  XXXIIId : 

Thou    art    my   hiding-place;     Thou    shalt 
From  trouble  keep  me  free. 

While  preaching  in  a  wood,  during  one  of  his  flying  visits 
to  Ireland,  he  read  the  XLIXth,  but  forbade  any  to  sing  it 
who  did  not  share  the  faith  it  expresses  in  the  sheltering 
care  of  God  and  his  just  judgments.  "Few  at  first  took 
part,"  we  are  told;  "but  soon  many  broke  out  and  sang 
with  such  force  and  feeling,  that  the  like  was  seldom  wit- 
nessed." The  psalms  broke  the  silence  of  the  solitudes, 
where  he  and  others  like  him  dispensed  word  and  sacrament 
to  the  persecuted  people  of  God  on  the  hillsides,  and  where 
at  other  times  were  heard  only  the  wild  notes  of  the  curlew 
and  the  plover.  At  Drumclog,  on  that  memorable  Sabbath, 
the  first  of  June,  1679,  Claverhouse  were  seen  by  the  senti- 
nels to  approach  Loudon  Hill,  where  such  a  pastor  was 
preaching  to  a  faithful  people.  As  the  notice  reached  them, 
they  parted  into  two  companies.     The  old  men,  the  women 


332      The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches. 

and  the  children  proceeded  up  the  hill  to  a  place  of  greater 
safety,  while  the  men  of  fighting  age  marched  down  the  hill 
to  encounter  the  merciless  enemy.  Both  sang  the  LXXVIth 
Psalm  to  the  plaintive  tune  of  Martyrs: 

There  arrows  of  the  bow  He  brake 

The  shield,  the  sword,  the  war. 
More  glorious  Thou  than  hills  of  prey, 

More  excellent  art  far. 

Those  that  were  stout  of  heart  were  spoiled, 

They  slept  their  sleep  outright; 
And  none  of  those  their  hands  did  find, 

That  were  the  men  of  might. 

So  they  sang,  in  stout  response  to  each  other,  their  defiance 
of  God's  foes,  who  broke  and  fled  before  a  company  they 
far  outnumbered,  and  the  archenemy,  Graham  of  Claver- 
house,  .barely  escaped  with  his  life.  Ten  years  later,  at  the 
market-cross  of  Douglas,  Alexander  Shields  gave  out  the 
same  psalm;  and  then  and  there  was  formed  the  Cameron- 
ian  regiment  under  the  command  of  William  Cleland,  the 
poet-soldier,  who  had  fought  at  Drumclog,  and  who  was  to 
fall  in  the  heroic  defense  of  Dunkeld  by  those  stout  fighters. 
About  six  months  before  this,  William  of  Orange  had  landed 
at  Torbay  with  his  army  of  liberation,  and  had  asked  William 
Carstairs,  the  Scotch  minister  who  had  more  influence  with 
him  (Macaulay  says)  than  any  other  adviser,  to  lead  the 
soldiers  in  worship.  Carstairs  gave  out  part  of  the  CXVIIth 
Psalm,  "in  which  the  troops  all  along  the  beach  joined,  and 
this  act  of  devotion  produced  a  sensible  effect."  It  was 
Donald  Cargill's  martyr  psalm,  and  Carstairs  may  have 
chosen  it  for  that  very  reason : 

The  Lord  Himself  is  on  my  side; 

I  will  not  be  afraid; 
For  anything  that  man  can  do 

I  shall  not  be  dismayed.  .  .  . 

In  dwellings  of  the  just  the  voice 

Of  joy  and  health  shall  be; 
The  right  hand  of  the  mighty  Lord 

Doth  ever  valiantly. 


The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches.      333 

Nor  did  these  gracious  associations  end  with  that  time 
of  trouble.  When  Ebenezer  Erskine  must  leave  his  church 
in  Stirling  in  1740,  he  gathered  the  multitude  of  those  who 
went  out  with  him  into  the  Secession  movement,  under  the 
battlements  of  the'  Castle,  and  sang  the  LXth  Psalm.  When 
Chalmers,  with  more  than  four  hundred  ministers  of  the 
Established  Kirk,  marched  out  of  St.  Andrew's  Church  to 
the  great  hall  at  Cannonmills,  in  1843,  leaving  behind  them 
their  positions,  their  incomes,  their  homes,  he  called  upon 
them  to  sing  the  XLIIId  Psalm: 

O  send  Thy  light  forth   and  Thy  truth; 

Let  them  be  guides  to, 
And    bring   me    to    Thy    holy    hill, 

Even   where   Thy   dwellings  be.   .    .   . 

Why    art    thou   then    cast    down,    my    soul? 

What  should   discourage  thee? 
And    why    with    vexing    thoughts    art    thou 

Disquieted  in  me? 

Still  trust  in  God;  for  Him  to  praise 
Good  causes  I  yet  shall  have. 

So  the  psalm-book  made  its  way  into  the  affections  of  a 
devout,  strenuous  and  spirited  people,  and  took  its  place 
between  the  Bible  and  Burns  as  a  household  book  of  a  nation. 
The  Scottish  settlers  of  Ulster  carried  it  thither  with  them; 
and  when  the  tyrannies  and  vexations  of  the  prelates  drove 
most  of  them  over  seas  to  America,  they  brought  the  psalm- 
book  as  well  as  the  Bible.  It  was  one  of  the  ties  which  bound 
them  to  the  land  of  their  forefathers,  and  helped  them  to 
endure  the  perils  and  toils,  the  isolations  and  deprivations 
of  their  frontier  life.  Quite  natural,  then,  was  their  in- 
dignation when  they  heard  that  Dr.  Isaac  Watts,  in  his 
"Psalms  of  David  Imitated  in  the  Language  of  the  New 
Testament"  (1713),  had  declared  the  Bible  Psalms,  which 
were  associated  in  their  minds  with  many  a  communion  sea- 
son, and  many  a  dying  bed,  were  unfit  for  Christian  use  as 
they  stood.     They  had  learned,  as  Dr.  Watts  never  did  or 


334      The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches. 

could,  the  fitness  of  even  the  stern  words  of  the  Psalmists 
for  actual  human  life.  Their  long  endurance  of  the  in- 
solence and  the  caprices  of  prelatic  tyranny  on  one  side  of 
the  Atlantic,  and  their  perpetual  peril  from  the  merciless 
red  men  on  the  other,  had  made  such  words  intelligible  and 
comfortable  to  them. 

The  controversy,  which  Dr.  Watts  unwittingly  began,  had 
effects  which  are  still  felt  in  the  divisions  of  our  Presby- 
terian Israel.  The  smaller  and  more  conservative  branches 
of  the  Church  asserted  not  only  the  fitness  of  the 
Psalms,  but  their  exclusive  fitness  for  the  worship  of 
God's  people.  In  both  New  York  and  Philadelphia,  and  in 
the  Presbyterian  Synod  of  New  England,  congregations 
were  agitated  and  sometimes  divided  by  the  introduction 
of  those  Christianized  Psalms,  whose  popularity  was  due 
parti}7  to  the  influence  of  the  Great  Awakening,  and  partly 
to  their  adaptation  to  the  poetic  taste  of  the  eighteenth 
century. 

It  certainly  is  true  that  the  educated  man,  who  opens 
the  old  psalm-book  for  the  first  time,  and  has  with  it 
no  associations,  national  or  personal,  will  be  struck  by 
its  offenses  against  grammar,  meter  and  pronounciation, 
although  he  will  be  much  less  so  if  he  be  familiar  with 
the  English  pronunciation  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Yet 
it  has  enjoyed  the  admiration  of  a  larger  number  of  men 
of  literary  eminence  and  cultivated  taste  than  has  any  other 
body  of  praise  songs  in  our  literature.  We  all  recall  the 
fine  use  made  of  it,  and  of  the  music  to  which  the  Scot- 
tish people  sang  it,  in  Robert  Burns 's  "Cotter's  Saturday 
Night": 

The   cheerfu'    supper   done,   wi'   serious   face, 

They,  round  the  ingle,  form  a  circle  wide; 
The  sire  turns  o'er,  wi'   patriarchal  grace, 

The  big  ha'  Bible,  ance  his  father's  pride; 
His  bonnet  rev'rently   is  laid   aside, 

His  lyart  haffets  wearing  thin  and  bare; 
Those  strains  that  once  did  sweet  in  Zion  glide, 

He  wales  a  portion  with  judicious   care; 
And   ' '  Let   us   worship   God !  "  he   says,  with   solemn   air. 


The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches.      335 

They   chant   their   artless  notes   in   simple   guise; 

They  tune  their  hearts,  by  far  the  noblest  aim ; 
Perhaps  ' '  Dundee  'a ' '  wild-warbling  measures  rise, 

Or    plaintive    ' '  Martyrs, ' '    worthy    of    the    name ; 
Or  noble  ' '  Elgin ' '  beets  the  heavenward  flame, 

The   sweetest   far   of    Scotia's  holy  lays: 
Compared   with    these,    Italian    trills    are    tame; 

The  tickled  ear  no  heartfelt  raptures  raise; 
Xae  unison  hae  they  with  our  Creator 's  praise. 

Thomas  Campbell  protested  publicly  against  the  proposal 
to  modernize  it.  Sir  Walter  Scott,  on  the  same  occasion, 
wrote  to  the  chairman  of  the  General  Assembly's  Committee 
on  Psalmody,  hoping  that  "whatever  change  might  be  made, 
it  would  be  with  a  lenient  hand.  Its  expression,  though 
homely,  is  plain,  forcible  and  intelligible,  and  very  often 
possesses  a  rude  sort  of  majesty  which  would  be  ill  ex- 
changed for  mere  elegance."  Its  strong  and  familiar  verses 
were  Sir  Walter's  comfort  on  his  deathbed.  Archdeacon 
Hare  was  so  much  impressed  by  hearing  Edward  Irving  read 
it  to  his  London  congregation,  that  he  published  a  selection 
from  it  for  use  in  the  Church  of  England.  Thomas  Carlyle 
knew  it  by  heart,  and  whenever  in  his  histories  anyone 
quotes  a  psalm,  he  gives  his  readers  the  metrical  version, 
adding  "as  the  Northern  kirks  still  sing."  The  reviewer  of 
Mr.  Marsham's  "Life  of  Sir  Henry  Havelock, "  in  Black- 
wood's Magazine,  expresses  his  regret  that  that  brave  and 
devout  soldier,  in  worshiping  with  his  men  in  India,  had 
nothing  better  to  sing  from  than  a  Baptist  Hymn-Book — 
that  he  had  not  the  Scottish  psalm-book  with  its  admirable 
adaptation  to  such  situations  as  theirs  and  his.  Mrs.  Gaskell 
and  Mrs.  Oliphant.  two  women  of  genius  but  of  very  different 
theological  training  and  convictions,  both  refer  to  the  old 
psalms  with  praise  in  their  novels. 

Such  praise  as  this  could  not  be  elicited  by  mere  doggerel 
or  clumsy  versification.  The  Psalm-Book  of  1650  must  possess 
sterling  merits,  to  lead  such  judges  of  literary  quality  to 
overlook  its  palpable  faults.  I  rejoice  in  these  testimonies, 
because  for  myself  I  must  say  that  the  psalms  my  mother 
required  me  to  commit  to  memory  have  been  to  me  a  r 


336      The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches. 

tf  d«,  a  perpetual  possession.  Many  a  long  ride  over  our 
American  hills  and  prairies  have  I  shortened  by  repeating 
them,  while  Dr.  Watt's  "Divine  and  Moral  Songs,"  which 
she  also  had  me  memorize,  have  left  no  impression  but  that 
of  their  priggishness  and  their  eighteenth-century  mannerism. 

The  music  of  the  psalm-book  of  1650  Avas  much  less  varied 
than  that  of  the  psalm-book  of  1564,  because  of  the  much 
smaller  variety  of  meters.  Almost  all  but  the  short-meter 
tunes  of  the  older  work  were  condemned  to  oblivion.  There 
was  no  authoritative  setting  of  the  psalms  of  the  second 
book,  as  of  the  first ;  but  the  traditions  of  the  Reformation 
psalmody  were  retained  as  far  as  possible.  So  in  later  psalm- 
books  furnished  with  tunes,  we  find  a  considerable  group  of 
these,  which  go  back  to  Bourgeois,  Goudimel  and  Le  Jeune. 
Some  of  these  advertise  their  origin  by  their  very  names: 
Old  XXIXth,  Old  XLIVth,  Old  LXXXIst,  Old  Cth,  Old 
Clld,  Old  CXIIIth,  Old  CXXIVth,  Old  CXXXIVth,  and 
Old  CXXXVIIth.  Besides  these  we  meet  with  tunes  as- 
cribed to  the  Genevan  Psalter  or  its  composers :  Command- 
ments, Greenland,  Mayenne,  Rutherford,  Toulon,  St.  Cath- 
erine; and  to  the  early  Scotch  Psalters:  Abbey,  Aberfeldy, 
Bon  Accord,  Caithness,  Culross,  Dumferline,  Dundee,  Elgin, 
French,  New  London,  Martyrs,  Melrose,  Wigton,  Old  Win- 
chester, Windsor  and  York. 

Popular  affection  clung  to  the  old  Tunes,  as  to  the  Psalms 
which  were  sung  to  them;  and  many  no  doubt  would  have 
approved  of  the  act  of  the  Council  of  Geneva  in  sending 
Louis  Bourgeois  to  jail  for  altering  tunes  which  had  come 
into  use.  It  was  a  jest  at  such  conservatism,  that  the  Mothers 
in  Israel  were  said  to  believe  there  were  "Twelve  Inspired 
Tunes,"  which  David  "composed  when  he  put  the  Psalms 
into  meter."  These,  if  my  memory  serves  me  right,  were 
Abbey,  Dundee,  French  (which  in  America  passes  for  Dun- 
dee), New  London,  Martyrs,  Melrose,  Old  Hundred,  Old 
Hundred-and-Second.  Wig-ton,  Old  Winchester,  Windsor  and 
York. 

Another  point  of  excessive  conservatism  was  the  reten- 
tion of  the  practice  of  "lining  out"  the  Psalms  by  the  pre- 


The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Keformed  Churches.      337 

centor,  two  lines  at  a  time  before  singing.  The  Scotch  mem- 
bers of  the  Westminster  Assembly  protested  against  the  ap- 
proval of  such  a  practice  in  the  Assembly's  "Directory  for 
Worship,"  on  the  ground  that  it  was  needless  in  Scotland, 
where  the  excellent  parish  schools  had  made  reading  uni- 
versal. But  the  English  members  said  it  was  necessary  in 
England,  and  thus  it  came  to  used  be  in  Scotland  and  Ulster, 
and  even  in  America.  I  remember  seeing,  as  a  child,  two 
good  women  who  walked  miles  across  the  country  to  our 
Donacloney  "meeting-house,"  past  that  at  Tullylish,  because 
our  precentor  still  "lined  the  psalm,"  while  that  at  Tully- 
lish had  ceased  the  usage.  An  Indiana  pastor  told  me  that 
on  the  day  when  the  ' '  lining  out ' '  was  given  up  in  his  church, 
one  good  elder  rose  and  left  the  church,  and  sat  down  under 
a  tree  within  sight  of  the  pulpit,  where  he  "lined  out"  the 
psalm  for  himself,  and  sung  it.  Such  facts  are  a  warning 
on  the  line  of  Oliver  Cromwell's  famous  admonition  to  the 
Scottish  General  Assembly:  "I  beseech  you,  in  the  bowels 
of  Christ,  to  think  it  possible  that  you  may  be  mistaken." 

Two  of  the  Presbyterian  Churches  have  effected  revisions 
of  the  Psalter  of  1650.  The  Established  Church  of  Scotland 
toiled  over  the  matter  through  nearly  the  first  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  without  reaching  any  result,  so  that  the 
unaltered  psalm-book  of  1650  is  still  used  along  with  the 
Scottish  Hymnal  of  1870.  The  Presbyterian  Church  of  Ire- 
land has  made  a  good  but  cautious  revision,  chiefly  by  adding 
new  versions,  some  of  which  are  quite  good,  although  none 
are  superlatively  so.  The  United  Presbyterian  Church  of 
America  adopted  a  thorough  but  rather  tame  revision  in 
1870,  which  failed  to  give  satisfaction,  and  a  new  psalm- 
book  comes  before  their  Assembly  this  year.  It  aims  at  a 
greater  variety  of  meters  than  in  the  old  book,  and  in  this 
coincides  with  the  taste  of  its  western  churches,  and  may  be 
said  to  return  to  the  practice  of  the  Reformation  period. 

We  all  would  gain  much  and  lose  nothing  by  a  return  to 
the  type  of  psalm-book  used  in  all  the  Reformed  Churches 
of  that  heroic  age,  of  which  the  French  Psalter  was  the  first 
great  example.     This  would  involve    (1)   the  restoration  of 


338      The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches. 

the  Book  of  Psalms,  either  in  its  entirety — which  I  should 
prefer — or  in  an  ample  selection,  to  the  foremost  place  in 
our  book  of  praise.  Julian's  "Dictionary  of  Hymnology" 
(London:  1892)  enumerates  over  three  hundred  and  fifty 
partial  or  complete  metrical  versions  of  the  Book  of  Psalms 
in  the  English  language.  A  good  number  of  these  are  the 
work  of  our  finest  devotional  poets — of  John  Milton,  George 
Herbert,  John  Keble,  Henry  Francis  Lyte,  Harriet  Auber, 
James  Montgomery,  Sir  Henry  Baker,  Benjamin  Hall  Ken- 
nedy, Horatius  Bonar,  and  others.  From  such  an  array  it 
surely  is  possible  to  collect  versions  of  poetic  merit,  faithful 
to  the  text,  and  capable  of  being  sung  to  the  best  music. 
(2)  The  addition  of  other  songs  of  praise,  strictly  scriptural 
in  character,  in  accordance  wTith  the  tradition  of  the  Re- 
formed Churches  of  every  land,  from  Calvin's  Strassburg 
Psalter  of  1538,  dowTn  to  our  own  times.  It  is  my  convic- 
tion that  the  departure  from  this  tradition  by  conservative 
Presbyterians  has  been  the  outcome  of  a  controversy  pro- 
voked by  the  denial  of  the  fitness  of  the  Psalms  of  the  Bible 
for  Christian  worship;  and  that  the  feeling  on  this  point 
has  been  intensified  by  the  dropping  of  the  Psalms  from 
their  old  place  of  honor  in  our  modern  hymnaries.  As  the 
fathers  used  to  say,  we  need  to  be  on  our  guard  against  both 
"right-hand  and  left-hand  defections"  here.  Dr.  William 
Sanday  says  that  history  is  the  dove  with  the  olive  branch 
in  her  beak,  showing  us  the  wrongfulness  of  the  extremes 
which  sunder  us  into  parties.  (3)  A  return  to  the  grand 
music  of  the  Reformed  Church  in  its  heroic  days,  which  never 
has  been  surpassed  in  either  solid  merit  or  popular  quality. 
The  work  of  Bourgeois,  Goudimel  and  Le  Jeune  was  a  gift 
of  God  to  the  Reformed  Churches.  They  were  raised  up 
for  a  divine  service,  and  we  are  despising  our  birthright 
when  we  turn  our  backs  upon  them  to  find  a  substitute 
in  German  or  Anglican  compositions,  wThich  are  essentially 
alien  to  our  Reformed  spirit. 

What  has  induced  me  to  undertake  this  paper  is  the  hope 
that  it  may  be  a  contribution  to  Presbyterian  reunion,  by 
showing  on  what  ground  our  fathers  stood,  and  on  what  we 


The  Psalm-Book  of  the  Reformed  Churches.      339 

also  may  take  our  stand  in  the  united  maintenance  of  the 
great  truths,  which  to-day  are  so  widely,  vehemently  and 
fundamentally  disputed.  Even  if  there  are  points  on  which 
we  shall  be  unable  to  "see  eye  to  eye,"  can  we  not  be  con- 
tent with  the  old  Scottish  practice  of  "declaring  our  separa- 
tion from"  the  things  to  which  we  cannot  agree,  without 
severing  from  the  communion  of  our  brethren?  "When  Dr. 
Henry  Cook  objected  to  the  use  of  the  Paraphrases  in  the 
churches  of  the  Irish  General  Assembly,  he  cut  them  out  of 
his  own  copy  of  the  psalm-book  and  sewed  them  to  the  bind- 
ing of  every  copy  in  his  pulpit,  to  make  sure  they  would  not 
be  given  out  in  his  absence.  But  he  did  not  leave  the  Church 
on  that  account,  while  he  thus  "declared  his  separation" 
from  current  usage.  So  may  we  take  away  the  reproach  of 
Presbyterianism,  as  capable  of  division  rather  than  of  unity, 
as  is  shown  by  the  existence,  first  and  last,  of  twenty-eight 
separate  Churches  of  our  name  in  this  country. 


ANNUAL  SERMON  PREACHED  BEFORE  THE  PRES- 
BYTERIAN HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  ON  SUNDAY, 
FEBRUARY  20,  1910,  IN  THE  PRINCETON 
PRESBYTERIAN  CHURCH, 
PHILADELPHIA, 

By  the  Pastor,  Rev.  H.  Alford  Boggs. 

Glimpses  of  the  Old  Scottish  Kirk. 

Deuteronomy  32:7.  Remember  the  days  of  old;  consider 
the  years  of  many  generations. 

The  Presbyterian  Historical  Society's  work  is  a  sermon 
on  this  text.  A  too  literal  interpretation  is  sometimes  given 
to  that  Apostolic  word,  "Forgetting  the  things  which  are 
behind."  The  Apostle  himself  did  not  literally  interpret 
that  word;  the  past  for  him  became  an  inspiration  for  the 
present  and  the  future.  Some  things  he  never  forgot;  the 
vision  of  the  Damascus  road,  the  fellowship  of  Christ  in  the 
seclusion  of  Arabia,  his  vow  of  service,  his  pledges  of  obedi- 
ence— these  were  things  of  the  past,  and  yet  they  were  really 
in  the  present.  Those  who  never  study  the  past  will  be 
but  poor  workers  in  the  present,  and  ill  interpreters  of  the 
future. 

The  Presbyterian  Historical  Society  seeks  to  preserve  the 
memory  and  the  memorials  of  the  past.  It  gently  insists 
that  the  church  which  it  seeks  to  serve  is  a  historic  church. 
The  only  church  without  a  past,  without  traditions,  without 
historic  councils,  without  precedents  to  guide  present  or 
future  action,  was  the  Apostolic  church.  That  was  a  Chris- 
tian church  without  a  past.  At  once  a  rather  dangerous 
generalization  might  be  made:  "Because  they  were  a  church 
without  a  past,  therefore  their  work  was  so  splendid,  so  mag- 
nificent; they  were  unhampered  by  a  past."  If  they  were 
unhampered  by  a  past,  they  were  also  unhelped  by  a  past; 
unhelped  by  the  mistakes  or  the  successes  of  those  who  had 
gone  before.     However  the  Jews  might  have  admired  Mel- 

340 


A 


